Celebrating the 45th Anniversary of The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour

It was 45 years ago today…that the Beatles presented to the world their first critical flop: the TV special Magical Mystery Tour. 

On what the British call “Boxing Day,” December 26, 1967, BBC1 broadcast the 53 minute color musical special at 8:35 PM in black and white, and reaction was mixed to say the least. It was shown a few days later in color, but it was still given bad reviews. The program has gathered a better reputation over the years, because of the quality of the music and its capturing of the fab four in their psychedelic prime, but it still remains an oddity in their canon.

Since I received the Magical Mystery Tour Deluxe Box Set for Christmas, and today is the 45th anniversary, I decided to give the spiffy new Blu ray a whirl. It’s been a long time since I’ve watched the full film, so I don’t remember a lot of it. I remember first seeing it on a VHS release in the ‘80s, and making fun of it with a Beatle-maniac friend of mine. As a kid I had loved “A Hard Day's Night,” “Help!,” and “Yellow Submarine” (and still do), but this was just weird.

One of the things I remember most from it was a grotesque scene in which John Lennon played a grinning waiter, who used a shovel to pile spaghetti onto a fat woman's plate. That's an image that certainly stands out in the color booklet that came with the original EP, and the U.S. album and is reprinted in this edition.

I later came to appreciate its psychedelic significance (i.e. it’s great if you’re stoned), but it was still weird. Let’s start with its flimsy premise - the Beatles join a odd assortment of people on a bus ride to an unknown destination. 

As Malcolm McDowell put it in his narration in the drab 1982 documentary “The Compleat Beatles”: “Largely a project of Paul’s, the idea was to travel the English countryside in a bus filled with friends, actors and circus freaks, and to film whatever happened. Unfortunately, nothing did.” 

It opens promisingly with a bouncy montage set to the Paul-sung song “Magical Mystery Tour,” and introduces us to Ringo, still sporting his Sgt. Pepper mustache, as the main character (as he was in previous Beatles movies) buying tickets for the bus tour. John Lennon’s narration tells us that Ringo and his Aunt Jessie (Jessie Robbins), who he’s taking on the trip, are “always arguing about one thing or another.” 

They bicker throughout the film, never about anything specific, as it’s all improv. This was the biggest problem with Magical Mystery Tour - its famous lack of a script. There was some pie-chart-like break down of idea sections (reprinted in the slick book that comes with the box set), but no dialogue was written, so this makes the non-song parts formless and un-engaging.

Ringo and Aunt Jessie board the bus and we meet more characters including tour director Jolly Jimmy (Derek Royle, who in a featurette on the disc tells us once played a corpse on Fawlty Towers), Hostess Wendy Winters (Miranda Forbes), Mr. Bloodvessel (Ivor Cutler), a little person photographer (George Claydon – later an Oompa-Loompa in “Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory”), a bunch of folks just credited as passengers on the bus, and the rest of the Beatles themselves, who are never properly identified or given much to do. 

The Beatles don’t even give themselves anything to do when dressed as wizards in groovy red robes and hats (their roadie Mal Evans appears as a fifth wizard), who are overseeing the bus tour from someplace up in the sky. Lennon tells us that they spend their days casting “wonderful spells,” but they don’t do anything that has any effect the entire film. Nor do they make us laugh.

Another unfortunately unfunny element is Victor Spinetti as a indecipherable motormouth Army Sergeant. At least, since he was in “A Hard Day's Night” and “Help!,” Spinetti, who died last June, offers some sort of continuity to their first three film projects. 

A lame love montage sequence between Aunt Jessie and Mr. Bloodvessel comes along to test viewer’s patience and make us wonder how could the Beatles at the height of their power think their fans would be into this?

The best parts are, of course, the songs. Like the musical bits in their other films, the song scenes have been called precursors to modern music videos, and they’ve even been extracted and played as music videos by MTV and VH1. 

“Fool on the Hill” mainly features Paul McCartney walking around the countryside looking introspective, “Blue Jay Way” has George Harrison sitting looking bored lip-syching while his fingers move on a piano keyboard drawn on the floor with chalk (there’s a better version of this with George smiling and seeming more engaged in the bonus features), but the show stopper is the “I Am The Walrus” sequence, featuring the Beatles miming the song amid the towering concrete structures at the West Malling Airbase while superimposed imagery and trippy visual trickery surrounds them. The “Your Mother Should Know” closer with the moptops in white tuxedos dancing in formation is pretty cool too. 

Surprisingly, despite these Beatles classics, the most interesting music number comes from the obscure comical rock band The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band doing the lounge lizard showcase of a song “Death Cab For Cutie.” Neil Innes, who would later embody the Lennon caricature in Eric Idle’s Beatles parody “The Rutles,” can be seen plunking away on the piano. The song also features a censored strip-tease by Jan Carson for no real reason at all.

In his “My World of Flops” entry on Magical Mystery Tour (its combined with a take-down of Paul's 1984 dud “Give My Regards To Broad Street”), the A.V. Club’s Nathan Rabin wrote that Magical Mystery Tour “anticipates both MTV’s early days, when it seemed like anything was possible and the cost of entry was exhilaratingly low, and the gleeful absurdism of Monty Python.” 

Indeed, several of the segments seem like dry runs for later Python premises – Victor Spinetti’s absurd military man is echoed in Graham Chapman’s Colonel character, a marathon involving the passengers that turns into a car chase heavily resembles the “Twit of the Year” competition sketch, Lennon’s snotty waiter from the aforementioned restaurant scene is a recognizable Python archetype (see John Cleese in “Monty Python's The Meaning of Life” dealing with the surreally obese Terry Jones), and even the footage of a large crowds’ reaction that’s interspersed throughout is reminiscent of the film of old ladies clapping that appeared to be in every episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

This new re-mastered version of Magical Mystery Tour boasts a bevy of special features including a 20 minute “Making of” documentary, featurettes concerning “Ringo the Actor” and the supporting cast, an interesting “Hello Goodbye” promo, and a few cut scenes including a song by Traffic (“Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush”). The best bonus feature is the commentary by Paul McCartney, but that’s more because it’s often unintentionally funny than it is insightful.

Sample quotes: “I was surprised, years later, to hear, I think it was Steven Spielberg say that they’ve shown this and taught him about it in film school as an example of a different approach to film making” and “In a way, it's sort of a disgusting scene” (guess which scene).

So there you have it, The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour TV special, still weird after all these years, finally gets a spot on my shelf. It’s a fun film to re-visit, even with its frustrating flaws. The folks at Capitol did a good job with this deluxe package. Now, please, release LET IT BE! Maybe next Christmas?

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Babblin’ about the rocking but exhausting 12.12.12 Concert

Whew! The six-hour 12.12.12 concert, which I watched last night on VH1 Classic, wore me out. The mammoth rock star-packed concert at Madison Square Garden to raise money for the Robin Hood Relief Fund benefiting victims of Hurricane Sandy started at 7:30 with a rollicking mini-set by Bruce Springsteen and ended a half hour after midnight with a concluding song by Alicia Keys, who at 31 was the youngest performer present.

After a opening montage of hurricane footage reminding us of all the devastating damage, the always-up-to-the task Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band kicked off the show with “Land of Hope and Dreams,” giving it all their trademark energy and power. “Wrecking Ball” from his most recent record of the same name followed, then an also appropriate gospel-tinged “My City of Ruins” from Springsteen’s 2002 9/11-themed album “The Rising.” In the intro to the last song, Springsteen spoke about Asbury park, getting a big crowd response when thanking “the arts community and the gay community” for the town’s recent renaissance.

Bruce brought up Jon Bon Jovi to duet with him on “Born To Run” which brought on more applause, but Bon Jovi’s voice wasn’t well suited to the song – it was too clean, not enough of the grit the anthem needs. But then I’m not a fan of the man, when Springsteen said that Bon Jovi has done a lot of great things for New Jersey, I couldn’t help thinking ‘yeah, his brand of strip club rock music does a lot of good for the state’s image.’

Billy Crystal, who’s on the promo circuit for his new awful-looking movie “Parental Guidance,” came on to make a few quips (like “you can feel the electricity in the building which means that Long Island Power was not involved”), do his impression of De Niro from “Raging Bull,” and make pleas for donations, something he’s very experienced at from all those Comic Relief telethons.

Susan Sarandon came on also asking for money, then introduced Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters to do several songs from his tour production of “The Wall” (“In The Flesh,” “The Happiest Days of Our Lives,” “Another Brick In The Wall Pt. 2,”) which didn’t really seem to address the concert’s theme but the audience who largely sang along didn’t seem to care. It was great that he was joined by what I presume were the “Fear Builds Walls” dancers during “Another Brick.”

Then Waters said it was time for some “stuff from “Dark Side” and performed “Money,” and a way too long (but then it always was) “Us and Them,” he was aided in singing by session vocalist Robbie Wyckoff, who looked like a blend of Daryl Hall and Eddie Vedder. Vedder was there for real, as everyone knew in advance, to do the David Gilmore vocal on the set closer “Comfortably Numb.” Vedder was well suited for the job making it a stellar version of the FM radio staple.

Rolling Stone and Vibe writer Alan Light recently wrote a book about the legacy of the Leonard Cohen classic “Hallelujah” (“The Holy or the Broken”), but the song may not be powerful enough to withstand Adam Sandler’s lame but performed with gusto satire of the song, with lines like “Hallelujah, Sandy screw you.” Paul Shaffer provided the piano backing, and some back-up singing, and, as usual, pulled it off without any embarrassment.

NBC anchor Brian Williams, who wondered out loud if Cohen was asked permission of their “for the ages” version of “Hallelujah,” chatted with Ben Stiller at the phone bank, and then without any warning Kristen Stewart was on stage talking about Hurricane Sandy. Some mini-featurette with Bon Jovi shot like he’s in an infomercial talking up a storm about the storm is shown. 

This sets up Bon Jovi’s set in which the band performed “It’s My Life,” “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” and then thankfully brought Springsteen back up onstage to duet on “Who Says You Can’t Go Home,” a song that despite that it was a huge hit, I’ve never heard before. Then the inevitable set closer “Living On A Prayer” did its best to stink up the place.

Boy, did this make Eric Clapton look like God in comparison! After some fun in the phone bank with Brian Williams (hey –there’s Tony Danza!), and some Jon Stewart silliness (“When Roger Waters was out here singing, how many of you remembered where you hid your pot in ninth grade?) onstage, Clapton came out and sat down with his trusty acoustic guitar to do a tender “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” He switched to Stratocaster to do “Got To Get Better In A Little While,” and finished up with “Crossroads.” 

Clapton’s never really been one of my guitar heroes, but he’s a solid presence at shows like this (though I thought he overplayed his solo on “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” at the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration at the Garden back in ’92).

Chelsea Clinton, looking a little nervous, spoke for a bit about the benefit, they showed another bit of video with storm footage, and one of the evening’s most anticipated acts was introduced by the world’s biggest rock fanboy Jimmy Fallon (“I’ve got to tweet this, this is unbelievable”): The Rolling Stones, currently celebrating their 50th anniversary.

The Stones only did two songs “You Got Me Rocking,” (from 1994’s Voodoo Lounge) and their 1968 single “Jumping Jack Flash,” but they made the most of them. Still don’t think I’ll shell out $40 to watch their pay-per-view show on Saturday night though.

Stephen Colbert did his over-confident pitch for pledges, and brought out Kanye West who introduced Alicia Keys. Alone at a grand piano, Keys played “Brand New Me,” and “No One” which the audience seemed to really appreciate - with her prompting they held up their cell phones for a sea of lights effect. This surprisingly didn’t annoy me like when it does when I go to concerts in person.

After a great shot of cast members from The Sopranos manning the phone banks, it was time for one of my all-time favorite bands: The Who. Of all people, Steve Buscemi introduced them, and joked about the Stones cutting their set short and of course gabbed about Sandy and some more video was shown of Robin Hood Relief Fund folks.

It was a typical set for the Who, who I saw do Quadrophenia last month in Greensboro, but a fine one with by the numbers versions of “Who Are You,” “Bell Boy,” “Pinball Wizard,” “See Me Feel Me,” “Baba O’Riley,” the show-stopping “Love Reign O’er Me,” and the new, well from 2006, “Tea and Theatre,” which they also closed with when I saw them. 

Lead singer Roger Daltrey’s voice was pretty rough at times, and I wish he’d keep his shirt closed, but Pete Townshend did more damage to his hearing with blazing solos, and Ringo Starr’s kid Zak filled Keith Moon’s shoes with great pounding timing. Moon appeared via large video screens (from footage shot in ’74) to sing his part on “Bell Boy,” something that was cool to see again.

Dapper host Williams joked about Daltrey taking his shirt off back at the phone bank and we got a better look at all the Sopranos people (James Gandofini got the biggest crowd reaction). After this I kinda spaced out when Crystal came back and threw it to newscaster Della Crews, but Chris Rock got my attention back.

Rock introduced Kanye West who performed his set that came off like one long song in a leather skirt. With no breaks “Clique” went into “Mercy” which went into “Power” into “Jesus Walks” into “All Of The Lights” into “Run This Town” into “Diamonds From Sierra Leone” into “Diamonds.” I had to look those all up since I don’t know West’s catalog very well. More recognizable were the songs he ended his set with: “Touch The Sky,” “Gold Digger,” “Good Life,” “Runaway,” and “Stronger.” Kanye’s set didn’t make me any more of a fan, but I can’t say it wasn’t entertaining.

Back to Williams who talked with 30 Rock’s Jack McBrayer, and put up with some more tomfoolery from Fallon, then SNL’s Seth Myers and Bobby Moynihan doing his Drunk Uncle character. Drunk Uncle is usually pretty reliably funny on the show but here it kind of fell flat.

After Jake Gyllenhall did more pitching for pledges, Billy Joel was up to do a lengthy (or maybe it just felt that way) set that consisted of “Miami 2017 (Seen The Lights Go Out On Broadway),” “Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song),” “Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas,” “New York State Of Mind,” “River Of Dreams,” and “You May Be Right, Only The Good Die Young.” Jesus, why did Joel get this many songs?

Next, after Blake Lively said some stuff, the surprise in Chris Martin of Coldplay’s set was that Michael Stipe of R.E.M. showed up to duet on “Losing My Religion.” The other songs in his short set – “Viva La Vida,” and “Us Against The World” were less interesting, of course, but still crowd pleasers, even if they weren’t me-pleasers.

More phone bank fun followed, and SNL’s Jason Sudekis and the ex-Mrs. Tom Cruise Katie Holmes put in their two cents for why you should donate your two cents presented some more video (no disrespect, but yawn), and then Leonardo DiCaprio (not there but onscreen) introduced Quentin Tarantino, Jamie Fox, and Christoph Waltz, all from the upcoming “Django Unchained” who introduced the headliner everyone’s been waiting for: Sir Paul McCartney.

Over the last day rumors have been spreading that McCartney’s set would feature a Nirvana reunion with Dave Grohl, Pat Smear and Krist Novoselic joining the ex-Beatle onstage. Well that happened, with a new song called “Cut Me Some Slack,” which wasn’t bad but nobody is going to mistake it for either band’s classic material. 

With his tight touring band McCartney also played “Helter Skelter,” “Let Me Roll It,” “1985,” “My Valentine” (with a guest appearance by Diana Krall), “Blackbird,” “I’ve Got A Feeling,” and “Live and Let Die.” McCartney is one of those rich celebrities that refuses to age. I won’t speculate about plastic surgery, but he sure as Hell doesn’t look 70. The fact that most of his music refuses to age too balances it out.

Alicia Keys came back out after Macca's set and closed the show with a poignant and fitting “Empire State of Mind Pt. 2.” 

Again, whew! After all that music, celebrities, and hurricane talk, I’m exhausted. Time to call it a blog and get some rest.

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